If we go back to the office, will there be fewer meetings?
And an important lesson- scheduling meetings with no agenda is passive-aggressive.
Fun fact, from the WSJ - “The number of days employees say they want to work from home peaked in December 2020 at 2.5 days and has been ticking down since, according to researchers from Stanford University, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and the University of Chicago. It now stands at 2.1 days a week, according to the group’s March survey.”
How much of wanting to go back to the office stems from the total overload of meetings for many remote teams?
Last week gave me a lot of thoughts about meetings, given some ups and downs I saw. One “up” was from a younger colleague, who was in charge of the agenda in a meeting we were in, where she practiced some of the best meeting hygiene I’ve ever seen. There was a serious detour in the conversation and the meeting was threatening to get stuck in the weeds and she jumped in with abandon, “can we get back to XX on the agenda and come back to this if we have time.” Clear, concise, and put everyone in their place. I was delighted to be in that meeting.
The ”down” happened to a close friend, who got a calendar invite from their superior on a consulting gig. “Discussion” was the title and had no agenda. This gave him 24 hours to freak out about what this meeting could be about, was he getting fired, critiqued, etc…
The ending, for him, is a happy one- it was actually a discussion about expanding the scope of the project. But his reaction is pretty common. In the absence of information, most people will assume the worst not the best. Scheduling a meeting with no agenda is a bit passive-aggressive for that reason. (that needs bolding!)
So, then, what IS the format of a good meeting? One that follows the agenda! Routines can cause people to glaze over, so it’s not a question of being a slave to the details, but finding the right way to cover the items on the agenda. In fact, research has shown that having or not having an agenda has no impact on the perceived value of a meeting. It’s not enough to have the agenda, it’s to create a goal for the meeting and then be transparent about what you’ll need to discuss to achieve that goal.
See more on my blog! Want Better Meetings - Here’s 3 Key Elements for Your Agenda
Lately I’ve been on some very cool podcasts, so if you’d prefer to listen not read about Digital Empathy check out The Doug Thompson Podcast or The Experimental Leader Podcast.